


Across the Raging Tide

by Nineveh_uk



Category: Margery Allingham - Albert Campion series
Genre: 1940s, F/M, First Time, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nineveh_uk/pseuds/Nineveh_uk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Albert and Amanda finally get married, an immediate sequel to <i>Traitor's Purse</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Across the Raging Tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thia](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Thia).



> Originally posted for Yuletide 2008 to a prompt by Thia: http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/82/acrossthe.html

 

 

_Begone she stormed, across the raging tide_

He lifted his face from hers with some reluctance.

'Better?'

'Much.' Amanda grinned. 'Not a slur on previous competence, you understand, but the enthusiasm is greatly appreciated.'

'Henceforth, I shall be nothing if not enthusiastic.' He kissed her again lightly. 'In the meantime, I must make some telephone calls, not least to the Archbishop.'

Campion vanished back into the hallway, and a moment later Amanda heard his voice raised in that peculiar strangled note that indicated he was on the telephone. For a moment nobody seemed to need her, and with this realisation, that it was all over and Lee Aubrey and his scheme were gone and Albert Campion of his own free will was arranging her to marry her tomorrow, she felt herself began to give way. She ran upstairs to her bedroom and gave herself over to a good cry in relief.

When she emerged, Albert was sitting at a small table dashing off a letter. 

'Thought I'd better notify one or two people. We don't actually want them to turn up, so I shan't post them until after the ceremony. Have you rung Alan?'

Amanda hesitated, and then lied, 'Yes. He was terribly sweet about it, and it's quite all right about the time off.'

'Good. I've squared things with Canterbury, though we may be in for dinner and uncle at some point in the not-too-distant, and Mary Crake says we can have The Standings for the honeymoon. It won't be a very long one, I'm afraid. I'll have to be back in London on Saturday.' 

'It's better than a lot of people get.'

'That's true enough, and I'm not going back to face what they will, either. Damn it, Amanda, sometimes it terrifies me to think how much I don't deserve any of this: a cushy job with the FO -'

'I hardly think you can consider the past few days a piece of cake!'

'They haven't been on the front line,' he said, soberly.

'No, that's true enough. We're not asked to put up with anything in comparison to that.' Campion squeezed her hand, and she gave him that look again, startled and wistful, that made him feel a cad. 'Go on.'

'What was I saying? Oh yes, a moderately cushy job at the FO, the moderate part being when criminal types of various stripes are trying to bump me off, and I'll take that over being sent to New Zealand like that Alleyn chap, the rest of life to do much as I please, and you. God knows, I deserve that least of all. I've been a pig to you, Amanda. I never realized, but I know it now, and I swear I'll try to make it up, if ever I can.'

'You don't have to make anything up to me, Albert,' she said steadily. 'I suppose I wasn't entirely honest with you, either. Forget the past; I'll settle for the future.'

Campion yawned and looked at her sheepishly.

'I'm awfully sorry. I think I'd better turn in.'

'You look done up. I'll send Lugg to you with a hot-water bottle.'

'I'd rather have you.' He seized her suddenly to him and kissed her so that she shivered.

'I say! You _can_ do the heavy romantic stuff, can't you?'

He adopted an expression of imbecilic modesty. 'I do not like to compliment myself, but my friends say I am not untalented.'

He tripped lightly up the stairs and she waited until the footsteps ceased, and went to find Lugg, and then the telephone.

*

Light slanted in delicately around the curtains. It was much brighter now than it had been last time he looked, and the direction of the beams had shifted. It made the room look really very pretty. He heard dim sounds of stirring elsewhere in the house, but they did not seem important. He had something very important to do, and he was in the best place to do it. Campion let his eyes close and fell asleep again. 

*

Her hair was red, redder than gold and rubies. It lay over his hands on her white shoulders like blood. He woke abruptly. He felt as if he were fifteen years old, for the first time. 

*

'So you're awake?'

Dr Groves heaved his bag on to the desk as Albert performed a similar manoeuvre to raise himself onto his elbows.

'What time is it?'

'Two o'clock.'

'Two o'clock! But my good man, I'm supposed to be getting married in half-an-hour - in London!'

'They told me you'd say that. No, don't try to get up. The young woman telephoned me last night. Says she is very anxious to marry you, but has no desire to be left a young widow. My instructions are to see if you're up to it.'

'Dammit, of course I'm up to it,' he protested. 'I'll grant you it was a bit of a knock and I was pretty much out of it for a day or two, but I'm quite all right. Now I'm getting up, and going to get married, so you can avert your eyes or dig out my dressing gown.'

Dr Groves folded his arms and sagged efficiently against the wardrobe. 'She telephoned the Archbishop's office, too. Told him you weren't in your right mind. I swiped your X-rays from the hospital on the way here, and if I have to do it to keep you in bed, I'll agree with her. At least let me look in your eyes.'

Campion subsided into the pillows as Groves brandished the ophthalmoscope. The blood vessels floating before him in the yellow light made him think of the Nile delta. He must take Amanda to Egypt. Groves leaned back. 

'Now tell me how your head feels - and mind, _I'll_ know if you're lying.'

*

'You young squirt! I knew I shouldn't trust you an inch.'

Amanda, sitting prettily on the side of his bed, every scrap the ministering angel, smirked. 

'The job of the Lieut. is to know when Orph. is being an idiot. When did he say you might get up?'

'Tuesday, if I keep quiet for another day or two. I can marry you on Saturday.'

'That sounds all right. I really did speak to Alan this time, and it suits quite well. I can finish things off this week and then he'll give me a whole fortnight.'

'But my darling girl, the FO will be collaring me again that very day. It's not going to be much of a honeymoon for you.'

'Yes it is.' She grinned. 'Groves says you aren't to do any work for three weeks, and I'm claiming you for the lot. I'll have to run over to Surrey on Wednesday for the end of the week, but I can get my things and join you in London Sat. next. That is,' she said with false lightness, 'assuming you still want to go through with it?'

He caught her shoulder and pulled her down against him. 'In all seriousness,' he said, looking suddenly grave and thereby intelligent, 'I have wanted you since you were seventeen years old.'

*

There had been Biddy Paget, and a string of women before her. Women adored, idolised, with the pre-adolescent fervour of the boy for the train set in the shop window. Mooning after them feeling obvious, only to discover they were for someone else, someone who made it plain that he noticed them. Aubrey had had his pattern, and this was his, the ending not a flattered ego, but secret humiliation or scarcely better public embarrassment and the ending of any possible friendship. Amanda had seen that right at the start. Oddly, it made him feel better about it.

*

On Tuesday night they celebrated his move downstairs with supper à deux and a cuddle on the sofa. 

'I say, Albert.' Amanda disengaged herself and ran a hand through her hair. 'That stuff in the society columns about a long and sophisticated bachelor life is all bunk really, isn't it?'

He flushed. 'Is it that obvious?'

'I didn't mean it like that! Only it never sounded very plausible, you know, though mostly it's that you're not smug enough. I've hardly got an exciting history myself - I mean, I fell in love with _you_ when I was so terrifically young - so it's fair enough, only you do actually know everything, don't you, and, er, what to do about things? Because I turned down Mary's offer to talk to me because I couldn't stand it, and I was going to go to the doctor next month and I haven't had time, and though I think that I would rather like your children if you could bear the idea, I'd prefer if it weren't before Christmas.'

*

Long ago he had done some work in Kent on a smuggling case. There'd been some pretty hot French films in the stuff. The recollection did not make him over-confident of his own powers, though he was fairly sure that much of the illustrated performance would be neither required nor desired. On Thursday he gave Lugg the slip in Town and acquired a solid book from an educational seller, and some other items from a more specialist shop. 

*

Amanda was waiting by the window, in the dressing gown she had worn in Bridge and a nightgown of eau-de-nil silk. It was slightly too tight, and he realised with a start of shame that she must have bought it in expectation long ago and been unable to replace it in the war. Her shoulders, after all, were lightly freckled, her breasts under the taut cloth obtruded upon his notice. Somewhere far off a wild voice was singing in his head. He slipped the dressing gown from her shoulders and hoped for the best.

*

'Are you all right?'

She nodded against his shoulder. 'Oh yes! It was a bit uncomfortable, well, you know when, but otherwise really quite nice.'

It was not exactly a glowing encomium, but it would do for a start. There had been points when 'really quite nice' had been a lot more than he might have expected. He had disgraced himself at the worst possible moment, but Amanda, if rather taken aback, had only laughed about it in the right way and surprisingly it had made things rather easier thereafter. Had it not been utterly perverse to do so, a childish part of himself might have wished that in this place alone she had slightly less of that insouciant competence that had first attracted him to her, but he could not honestly think that he'd have been better with an equally nervous partner. He traced a hand over her body, patched red and white, and wondered if it would be selfish to suggest another go, and for precisely whose benefit (and how) he wished to satisfy certain conditions of masculine pride that were so far unmet. Her own hands moved down his back and round - he stifled a yelp and pulled her mouth against his.

'Albert?'

'Hmm?' He kissed her jaw, her throat, her breast and her legs stiffened and stretched beneath him. 

'That thing you sort of did, with your hand, before, I rather liked that and I wondered if you could...' She nudged his head vaguely downwards. 'Only not exactly, but like when I - the first time you - that is, do you think it works both ways?'

He tilted his face to meet her gaze. She was, as she had always been, frank, hopeful and resourceful, and ready with an answer to any situation. Her suggestion seemed, as ever, well worth a try.

 


End file.
